“It is clear that there are still many layers of uncertainty lying ahead,” said strategists at Credit Agricole, citing last week’s failure to make progress in Europe Union budget talks, weekend elections in Spain and ongoing talks over Greece’s finances.

Should the issue over Greece’s financial aid package be resolved, “this will likely trigger a gain in the euro despite softer economic data in the euro zone,” said the Credit Agricole strategists.

In early afternoon trade, the euro was at $1.2965 compared with $1.2976 late Friday. The dollar changed hands at ¥82.10 from ¥82.40. The U.K. pound bought $1.6018 from $1.6029.

Though the dollar weakened against the yen, it remained relatively strong, having gained 1.3% against the Japanese currency last week and 3.3% so far in November.

The ICE dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, recently traded flat at 80.21.

The Bank of Japan released the minutes Monday from its Oct. 30 policy meeting, which showed that two members favored strengthening the wording of the central bank’s commitment to “powerful easing.” The members wanted the central bank to say that it would continue with easing until its 1% inflation goal has been “steadily maintained” rather than the current wording, which states that the bank will ease until the goal is in sight.

With an election looming in December and Japan’s main opposition party stating that it wants to implement an inflation target of 2%, Barclays strategists said that “the timing of the more aggressive stance to target higher inflation is likely to depend on global factors as well, but the stars appear to be aligning for the changes to take place in the early part of 2013.”

“A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the upward move in [the dollar against the yen] can be surprisingly steep in response to higher inflation expectations,” they said.

The Wall Street Journal dollar index, which tracks the U.S. dollar against a basket of currencies, was at 70.32, off 0.01%.